Blog Archives
What I’ve read the past seven years
Here’s what I’ve read the past seven years. An asterisk means I was blown away.
2012
The DaVinci Code
Angels and Demons
2011
* The War of Art
The Snowman (Jo Nesbø and Don Bartlett)
* The Power of Now
* The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership
* Logicomix
* Hyperion
Having Everything Right
Going After Cacciato
Long Way Gone
The Hot Zone
Alive
2010
Into the Wild
Go Ask Alice
* The Great Divorce
* The Screwtape Letters
* Breaking the Rules
* This is Water
Trout Fishing in America
The Rape of Nanking
The Great Gatsby
2009
* The Enlightened Mind
* The Enlightened Heart
The Ten Principle Upanishads
* The Art of Dramatic Writing
* Outliers
The Doors of Perception
2008
* The Perennial Philosophy
* The Road
The Way of the Bow
* The Four Agreements
Rage
* Macbeth
* Siddartha
2007
Freakonomics
Slaughterhouse Five
* Cat’s Cradle
In the Lake of the Woods
War Trash
2006
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
* Skinny Legs and All
Discipline Without Stress, Punishments, or Rewards
* Hamlet
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Chosen
The Laramie Project
Oleanna
2005
‘Tis
* Angela’s Ashes
* All Over But the Shoutin’
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
There are No Shortcuts
* The Sparrow
* Fermet’s Enigma
2004
* Ender’s Game
Lord of the Flies
* 1984
Understanding Comics
Setting Up Your Shots
The Greatest Salesman in the World
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
The truth? The truth is I only sought out The Crying… because there is a powerful, cryptic line from it in the book In the Lake of the Woods.
One theme might be: there’s so much more going on than we realize. We perceive the edges of what’s really going on, unable to see the picture, occasionally seeing, or sensing, enough to know there’s more.
Is there more, or is the dull sleepwalking, manageable only with addictions, all there is?
There are new/made up words on each page. Does Pynchon purposely misspell words… you know, to make a point?
So lonely. Sad, confused. Defeated, yet still a little curious.
From Wikipedia:
As in his earlier novel, V., Pynchon seems to be making a point about human beings’ need for certainty, and their need to invent conspiracy theories to fill the vacuum in places where there is no certainty.
From SparkNotes:
The Crying of Lot 49 contains a pervasive sense of cultural chaos. Related to the theme of the problem of communication is the novel’s representation of the way in which people impose interpretation on the meaningless. It is very telling that Oedipa wants to turn the mystery of the Tristero into a “constellation,” which is not really an example of true order. Solar systems are simply mankind’s way of imposing an artificial but pleasing order on the randomness of outer space. It is, furthermore, an imposition of a two-dimensional structure onto a three-dimensional reality. Oedipa’s quest to construct a constellation seems to indicate that she is only looking for a superficial system.
Indeed, she never succeeds in figuring out the meaning behind the Tristero, and, further, the novel ends with the very strong likelihood that the mystery may hold no mystery at all. And just as she is unable to piece together the puzzle of the Tristero, she is similarly unable to refashion her life after it begins to fall apart.
Language is the means through which the story is communicated, and Pynchon has chosen to use a language full of jokes, puns, and satires. Science seems to stand in opposition to the chaos of language that all of Pynchon’s manipulation suggests. Science is ordered and coherent and offers a body of definite knowledge that all can study. And yet, even the coherence of science is undermined in the existence of Maxwell’s Demon and the figure of Dr. Hilarius. Though pure science may offer coherence, the uses to which that science is put, the interpretations imposed on that science, can scatter that coherence to the wind.
More than anything else, The Crying of Lot 49 appears to be about cultural chaos and communication as seen through the eyes of a young woman who finds herself in a hallucinogenic world disintegrating around her.
